By Despite early rumors to the contrary, which have cropped up on sites like Apple Insider and AllNewsMac, Intel has now officially announced that its new super-fast transfer technology, Thunderbolt, will not be exclusive to Apple’s products, despite making its debut yesterday on the company’s new line of MacBook Pro laptops.
Exclusivity, said Dave Salvator, senior communications manager of Intel’s global communications group, is “not the case. Apple saw the potential of Thunderbolt, and worked with Intel to bring it to market. Other system makers are free to implement Thunderbolt on their systems as well, and we anticipate seeing some of those systems later this year and in early 2012.”
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Apple’s initial interest in Thunderbolt is not really that surprising: The company’s computers have long been favorites of graphic designers and video editors who need to move lots of large files quickly, something at which Thunderbolt would seem likely to excel. It’s capable of transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps—or fast enough to move an entire high-definition movie in under 30 seconds, and because it’s based on the existing PCI Express and DisplayPort protocols, it has built-in compatibility that many upstart technologies might not.
Particularly interesting is that Thunderbolt is making its appearance in the guise of a Mini DisplayPort jack. Apple announced and promoted that smaller and completely compatible DisplayPort connector back in 2008, and would now seem to be giving people another reason to use it more frequently, and for a wider range of products than the monitor-focused ones for which it was originally designed.
Even if more companies take an interest in Thunderbolt, it will be a while before see any products. As PCMag reported yesterday, the technology is rolling out slowly, and so far only one major product, LaCie’s Little Big Disk, has been announced to use it. Its appearance on systems and its use in peripherals will have to go hand in hand for Thunderbolt to find wide-scale adoption.
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